Rebecca MacKinnon's postings about work, reading, and ideas from 2004-2011.

October 08, 2009

Since Obama became President - and yes, I voted for him - there has been a great deal of optimism and energy around the idea that the Internet can be used to improve or "reboot" our democracy. The Administration has hired some great people to work on making government more open and transparent.

This is all great. But how much good will all of this nifty e-government do for American democracy if citizens' rights to privacy and free expression are not also fiercely defended?

On that score, the Obama Administration has been dangerously disappointing. This month's news makes me feel like the U.S. is getting more like China in some ways.

The FTC has released new commercial endorsement guidelines for anybody who ever posts anything online, be it on a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon reviews, or wherever (except professional journalists who are exempt thanks to the First Amendment which seems only to apply to some Americans these days). While the guidelines are well intentioned and aim to promote honesty in product promotion and protect consumers on the Internet, they are so broad and vaguely worded that they could only be enforced selectively and unfairly. As Salon's Jack Shafer describes them: "They are written so broadly that if you blog about a good and service in such a way that the FTC construes as an endorsement, the commission has a predicate to investigate." What's more: "As I read the guidelines, the FTC could investigate you if you did disclose but it was not satisfied with the disclosure." See more critques from Dan Gillmor,Jeff Jarvis, the LA Times, and Jeff Bercovici at Daily Finance. As free speech activists living in authoritarian countries like China - or even pseudo-authoritarian pseudo-democracies like Singapore - will readily tell you, over-broad and vague regulations of speech are dangerous because there's no way to enforce them uniformly or fairly. So authorities enforce them selectively based on often arbitrary and generally un-transparent criteria. Such regulations become a great umbrella excuse to stifle speech that powerful people don't like for whatever reason. Over-broad regulations also have a chilling effect on speech because people tend to over-compensate in order to avoid trouble.

At the heart of the disagreement is the balance between national security and the public’s right to know. The best approach is to protect legitimate security claims while rejecting those that are made in the name of national security but are really aimed at avoiding embarrassment. That was the constant cry from the Bush administration as the public learned — through the unauthorized disclosure of confidential information — of prisoner abuse, secret C.I.A. prisons for terrorist suspects and warrantless wiretapping.

The Senate bill and a measure passed earlier in the House aim at a reasonable balance by relying on a federal judge to decide when security is not truly at risk and sources must be protected. The White House proposals would instruct judges to defer to the administration’s view of when and if a news leak presents a “significant” security leak. The executive branch would arrogate power to decide the public’s right to know by crimping the news media’s ability to make a case for disclosure.

If you want to create a chilling effect against any sort of whistleblowing on gov't corruption, that's what this proposal does. It basically lets the gov't say that the shield law only applies to whistleblowing that doesn't make the administration look bad. But, in any case where the administration isn't happy, it gets to wipe out the shield. Apparently, freedom of the press only applies to situations in which the administration is not embarrassed.

Dan Thomasson at Scripps Howard puts it this way: "Now it seems the president also has decided the people's right to know might not be all that beneficial to him or them."

Last but not least, there's the USA PATRIOT Act (full text here), which in 2001 expanded the government's powers to spy on American citizens in the course of anti-terror and criminal investigations. Three of its key provisions are up for reauthorization this year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will be considering them today (Thursday U.S. time). The Economist's Democracy in America blog has an excellent summary of the current state of play, which I take the liberty to quote at great length:

The Obama administration had requested reauthorisationof all three "sunsetting" Patriot-Act powers: roving wiretap authority; license to spy on so-called "lone wolf" terror suspects under the broad aegis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act; and "section 215" orders, which allow investigators to compel the production of business records or any other "tangible thing". Yet the Justice Department had also signaled its openness to "modifications" designed to protect the privacy of Americans and check potential abuses.

Russ Feingold took them up on the offer with an ambitious proposal that would have substantially overhauled the new foreign-intelligence-surveillance architecture. More modest was a proposal by Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee's chairman, that would have somewhat constrained the scope of both 215 orders and the controversial "national security letters", which internal probes found to be subject to endemic misuse.

Yet even the more moderate reforms proved a bridge too far for Dianne Feinstein, who swooped in at the last minute before last week's legislative mark-up session with her own substitute bill, stripping away even the feeble restraints Mr Leahy had supported. The reason was the purported fear of FBI officials that these constraints might interfere with a number of "ongoing investigations", intimated to have sprung from the arrest of suspected bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi. Over Mr Feingold's objections, Ms Feinstein's language was made the template for renewal legislation, and the committee is expected to report a final draft out to the full Senate on Thursday.

I'm worried that most liberals and progressives have stopped paying attention and are just assuming everything will work out ok now that "our guy" is in office. I was tremendously excited about Obama's candidacy. I was jubilant when he got elected. I don't see myself turning Republican any time in this lifetime, but if the Obama Administration doesn't start showing a bit more concern for American civil liberties - putting aside for the moment the question of whether he cares about anybody else's - I'm going to start wishing for a viable third party with a meaningful civil liberties and human rights platform.

September 07, 2009

The New York Times' Jonathan Ansfield reported on Sunday that Chinese news websites have quietly implemented "secret government orders" requiring new users to register their true identities before they can post comments. His interviewees explained the reason why the orders were a tightly guarded "secret," implemented without public announcement or discussion: if they announced it beforehand, public outcry and industry pushback might block implementation altogether.

That's exactly what happened with theGreen Dam mandate which was scrapped this summer, and with its failed proposals to implement real-name registration back in 2006. Given that China isn't a democracy, and neither policies nor laws require open debate in the legislature before they're passed, the government seems to have adopted a new tack with measures like the real-name system that are likely to be controversial: don't talk about it, just do it. Then aggressively work to shape public opinion after the fact so that you can claim the measure was in line with what mainstream and reasonable members of the public wanted anyway.

One point already being made is that South Korea's major websites already have a real-name registration system. (Apparently they use national e-commerce verification systems like this one (IE/Safari only) to run identity checks.) And Korea is a democracy. So, the argument goes, China is only in line with the growing global backlash against all the bad things that can come from anonymous Internet speech. One need look no further than the furore over the anonymous blogger who called aging supermodel Liskula Cohen a "skank" for evidence that many in the U.S., U.K. and Canada wouldn't mind a real-name system either. The EFF's Danny O'Brien rightly warned in an article last month that Korea is leading the global charge to stamp out anonymity.

A number of people here in China have been testing out the new registration system. The GFW blog has extensive annotated screenshots here. The NYT's Ansfield himself pointed out that he was able to register successfully using fake information. It appears that while many of the systems do check to make sure that the ID number you entered is a valid ID number, it doesn't verify whether the name you entered matched the number, let alone whether the human being entering the information matched any of it. Some people tell me they just search on the Internet for random ID numbers and use those. That said, as this blogger points out, all of these services log IP addresses. Even without real-name registration it's not so hard for the police to track somebody down if they really want to - as long as that person isn't using an anonymity tool like Tor and being extremely careful about their general online security. With growing numbers of Internet users being detained and prosecuted on charges of "spreading rumors" lately, even though the real-name registration system is far from thorough or perfect, it's likely to have a chilling effect.

Despite their website's unfriendly name, I found the founder Rao Jin and his core group of volunteers to be polite, friendly, smart, and professional, while also very passionate about their point of view. They're keen that the outside world not view them as brainwashed government agents. They want the world to understand that they're doing this of their own volition because they love their country and want their fellow citizens to think more critically about global media. The site is financed by Rao Jin's internet company. He insists that they take no government money.

The site has evolved from its CNN-bashing origins last year into a more general forum for media criticism - focused primarily on Western media. They do not, however, subject the Chinese media to the same kind of critical treatment. As Rao Jin said to me: "Our aim is not to challenge the government. We want to create a good space, a good platform where more people have a chance to participate in discussion. If the platform ceases to exist, then there are no voices at all, so first we have to guarantee its survival."

Moderator "Leslie" Liu Jing asked questions submitted in advance by members of the Anti-CNN community. Our conversation was videotaped. Meanwhile, as I answered, two volunteers summarized my answers in real time and posted them into the Anti-CNN forum. This morning I read through the whole thing. As one might expect with any "live-blogged" conversation, some details and nuances of what I said were lost, and sometimes the live-bloggers misunderstood what I was talking about. For instance, I referred to U.S. media coverage of Abu Ghraib as one example of how the interests of the U.S. media and government often do not coincide; the live-blogger typed it up in English as "Albert Grey," which I'm sure was an honest mistake. All in all, they did their best to record the substance of what I was saying. That is, with the exception of a couple of things that were completely omitted.

When I was asked to give examples of reasons why foreign reporters often don't trust what the Chinese government says, I cited my own experiences in which government officials lied about disaster casualties, and about the fate of people who I knew had been jailed. Those two examples were included. I also cited the fact that - while the exact number of deaths in the June 4th 1989 killing of protesters may be subject to dispute, it's a fact that the government refuses to acknowledge the deaths of many people who I know for a fact were killed - because I've spoken to the relatives of those people, who have proof that those individuals existed, and when and how they were killed. I said the fact that the government won't acknowledge their deaths amounts to refusing to acknowledge these people existed. This was not typed into the forum discussion. In response to a question I also discussed the imprisonment of AIDS activist Hu Jia, but no sign of that exchange appears in the forum, either.

After we finished, I was told that the videotape would have to be edited before they can post it online, because some of the content was too sensitive and would cause trouble for their website. I made an audio recording of the whole exchange. It is completely unedited. You can listen to it or download it here:

Due to time constraints, I'm not able to offer a full transcript and full English translation today. In future I may try to find somebody to help me out with that. Meanwhile, here is my summary of a few highlights:

The chat session opened with a question about Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's press conference at the closing of the National People's conference. In the press conference he criticized the Dalai Lama, among many other things he said. A community member wanted to know why the Western media seemed to de-emphasize that part of the press conference, focusing on other content instead. I said I wasn't at the press conference and wasn't in China when it happened, and didn't see the full transcript of the press conference, thus I don't remember precisely what Wen said about the Dalai Lama. However if Wen's remarks were substantively similar to things he has said in the past about the Dalai Lama, or a repetition of previous statements by the Chinese government or Xinhua News Agency, the Western media would not have considered it "news" because it wasn't "new."

Liu Jing then asked me why the Western media gave less attention to Chinese student demonstrators who came out in support for the Chinese Olympic torch relay than to the pro-Tibet independence demonstrations. I said that part of the reason has to do with the fact that the Western media tends to pay more attention to people claiming to be wronged or oppressed, and generally gives less airtime to people representing or supporting power-holders. I did also acknowledge that Westerners generally don't understand the patriotism of today's Chinese students abroad, the reasons for their patriotism, and the extent to which it's genuinely heartfelt.

The next question, from a community member, was whether Americans ever wondered why pro-Tibetan independence protestors appeared at the torch relay. I explained that Americans expect that protesters will appear at events involving a major world power, its leaders, or something representing that country's power. I said that if the Olympics had been held in the U.S. last year and Americans were going around the world doing a torch relay, no doubt all kinds of people would be showing up in protest. China is a world power now, so Chinese people are going to have to get used to seeing people around the world protesting against what China represents. It's part of life as a global power. It's not going to stop and you've got to learn to live with it. That said, I did agree that accosting the wheelchair-bound handicapped Chinese athlete in Paris was a very bad move on the part of the protesters. It showed the protesters' complete lack of understanding (or lack of interest) in how Chinese people viewed their protests.

There were a lot of questions about how CNN operates, how it gets its information, and the extent to which media all over the world, including in the West, is manipulated by political and market forces. I talked about how commercial pressures create media bias which can have a political result - because media outlets looking to boost ratings and circulation are sometimes concerned about reporting too many things that make viewers angry and unhappy, prompting them to change the channel or cancel their subscription. I also talked about how it's an undeniable fact that war is good for the news business, and good for many individual journalists' careers, and that this aspect of mainstream journalism has always made me feel uncomfortable. (I've written about some of these things here and here (PDF).) I also talked about commercial astroturfing, as well as blogging by campaign employees - or by blogger "consultants" - which is increasingly part of any Western politician's campaign strategy. My interviewer tried to get me to say that these things are the same thing as the censorship and manipulation that happens in China. I said it's not the same. But at the same time, anybody who is consuming any news from anywhere should not trust it until that news organization or blogger earns their trust. And there are plenty of reasons in any country not to trust any given news source completely.

I also made the point that while the Chinese media has evolved and grown more sophisticated over the past couple decades, and while the Internet has created a very wide space for discourse and debate than ever existed in the past, the information environment is still very skewed. Chinese investigative journalists have told me about numerous stories their editors won't allow them to publish. This includes the poisoned milk powder story which a Chinese journalist had been ready to break last spring, but was not allowed to do so - with the result that thousands more babies were sickened, their parents unaware of the danger when they might have been informed. Voices critical of central government policies are censored much more heavily on the Internet than voices of patriotic young people like the Anti-CNN, community. This results in a skewed information environment, reinforcing itself in a positive feedback loop.

My moderator said that China's censorship system is a national reality and she believes it's necessary for national stability.

I was asked about my 2003 interview with the Dalai Lama. I described how he said he was concerned about human rights abuses in Tibet, and that he was not seeking independence, but rather autonomy. That he wanted to be able to negotiate with the Chinese government about this. Liu Jing asked me whether I had asked the Dalai Lama why he wanted to return to Tibet and "become Tibet's chief slave owner." I said that the Dalai Lama's point was not to return Tibet to exactly what it was like in feudal times. The point was to give today's Tibetans more say in their own affairs, and that his idea was to return as a religious leader, not a political leader.

I did not get into a debate with them about historical facts surrounding China's sovereignty over Tibet, as that would have made it impossible to talk about anything else. It was very clear that the folks at Anti-CNN have decided what the facts are, and what they believe the correct version of history is, and that a shared view about these facts is a strong underpinning of the Anti-CNN community. I did suggest that aside from arguing with Westerners about Tibet, perhaps they should do more to engage with Tibetan people, and that the problems in Tibet will only be resolved if more Chinese and Tibetan people engage with one another and try to work out solutions. Liu Jing told me that she has been to Tibet and that in her experience all the Tibetan people she has interacted with say they are grateful for the development that the Chinese government has brought to them. She thinks that Westerners don't understand the real views of real Tibetan people. Reading through the comments posted by community members during and after the chat, it's clear that many community members don't think there's a problem in Tibet itself; they appear to believe that the whole problem is caused by the exile community and by Westerners who are enamored of the Dalai Lama, interfering in China's internal affairs.

My purpose in doing this interview was primarily to understand the Anti-CNN community better as part of my book research. Communities of enthusiastic, patriotic young people like the Anti-CNN volunteers are part and parcel of the phenomenon I call cyber-tarianism.

It will be very interesting to see how the Anti-CNN website continues to evolve. Rao Jin has plans to develop an English-language platform - with a less provocative, more friendly name - through which his community can engage in dialogue and debate with the English-speaking world. I think it's great that they're looking to expand their dialogue and engage with the world. It's important that the outside world understand that China's patriotic youth, like young Republicans or young Tories, feel that they are acting on their own belief systems and get angry when characterized as brainwashed puppets. It will be fascinating to see how the outside world reacts to these efforts, and how the Anti-CNN website administrators handle conversations that foreigners want to have with them involving events, people, or points of view that Chinese websites are generally required to censor in order to avoid being shut down.

April 06, 2009

I have been silent for a full month, working on a book proposal, trying to avoid distractions and tangents. Below is a preview, just the opening paragraphs of a much longer overview that I am still working on:

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A new form of highly networked authoritarianism is emerging in China. Call it “Cybertarianism.” It’s not uniquely Chinese, but understanding how the Internet is mediating the relationship between state and society in China can help us understand what’s happening around the world.

Signs of cybertarianism can be found in many countries. A number of democracies have creeping “cybertarian” tendencies, too. This is not a doomsday book, however. There are plenty of things that people around the world can do in the Internet age to expand genuine free expression and accountable government. But first we need to wake up and recognize what’s happening. 21st Century authoritarianism is not your father’s or grandfather’s authoritarianism. It can’t be addressed or understood in the same way.

Compared to classic authoritarianism, cybertarianism permits – or shall we say bows to the Internet’s inevitable consequences and accepts – a great deal of give-and-take between government and citizens. Cybertarianism is much more deliberative and participatory than the authoritarianism of the last century. While one party or set of ruling elites remains in control, the Internet enables a broad range of public discourse on matters of common concern. The result is that the average person with Internet or mobile access has much greater sense of freedom – and even potential to influence government policies – than could ever have been possible in a pre-Internet authoritarian regime.

At the same time, in the cybertarian state as in the classic authoritarian state, there is no real protection of the individual’s right to freedom of expression. People still go to jail when the powers that be decide they are too much of a threat – and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. It's not possible to organize an opposition party. There are no genuinely democratic mechanisms for citizens to elect a representative government. The courts are not independent of the ruling party.

Which brings us to China as “exhibit A.” ...

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... I will share more when the time is right. Meanwhile I have a couple more bits of media from the past couple months. Here is the video from an Open Society Institute panel, The Future of Freedom and Control in the Internet Age with Evgeny Morozov and Isabel Hilton:

..and here is my recent Radio Berkman interview with David Weinberger explores some of the ideas that will go into the book: